Guest Trip Report: December 17, 2018 4 Night on the Disney Dream, Day 3

This is a guest trip report written by Elizabeth, who sailed on the December 17, 2018 4 night cruise to the Bahamas on the Disney Dream.  You can start this trip report from the beginning by clicking here.

Day 3: Nassau

(click here to see this day’s Daily Navigator)

On day three, our daughter slept in until almost 6:45 (lol) and we awoke in Nassau to a stunning sunrise and a view of Atlantis!

We had decided to not book any port adventures on this day but instead to disembark for an hour or so to explore the town near the dock and then spend the rest of the day enjoying the amenities on a nearly empty ship.

We got ready and headed down to Cabanas for some breakfast. Here are our plates:

I still can’t get over how awesome the buffet was! We managed to snag a table by a window, so while we were eating, we enjoyed a lovely view of the city.

… until another cruise ship pulled up and blocked the view:

My husband commented that we were overboard because some of the tables in Cabanas are in nooks that hang off the side of the boat. I thought that was neat!

We went back to our room after breakfast to pack up our bag for the day and grab the ergo baby carrier. Our daughter is really too wiggly for it now as a toddler, but we decided to bring it because it could come in handy. Sure enough, we decided we’d rather carry her around Nassau then take a stroller. We’d heard that the merchants can be pretty aggressive in their selling tactics, and we wanted to keep her close so we could walk quickly and prevent her from grabbing a flower or something else that a merchant might try to give her and then make us pay for.

Before we left the ship, we took a look at the view from our veranda:

Two other ships had docked to our left (it was around 8:30 at this time):

Once we had our things, we headed down to get some fancy coffee (latte for me, espresso for the husband), and saw that they were setting up for Mickey Mouse! We knew our daughter would be thrilled to meet him, so we hopped behind the first people in line. Within five minutes, there was a long line of people behind us. The big man himself came out a couple of minutes later, and sure enough, he made our girl’s day!

After this, we went down to deck 1 and disembarked. We walked to the end of the dock and were met with a throng of people from the other ships in port that day. We attempted to walk past them since we weren’t with a tour group, but it was an insanely crowded mob of people. It was impossible to do anything but get swept up in it. I was so glad we didn’t have the stroller!

This made our walk to the shop area take quite a long time considering the short-ish distance we had to travel. All of the tour guides from all of the ships were carrying their long sticks to guide their participants, and I lost count of how many were out there. I think if we follow this same plan in the future and disembark in Nassau just to walk around, we will wait a couple of hours to avoid this madness. We will probably have to brave it if we decide to do Atlantis or something, though, because the DCL Atlantis excursion group was among the crowd.

We finally battled our way through the throng and walked through a building that led us to the merchant area. We kept our heads down and walked quickly, and we avoided any uncomfortable encounters. We made it onto Bay Street and breathed a little easier as it was lined with stores and allowed us to walk at a slower pace. We made our way down to the Nassau Straw Market to explore because we had heard it was much more authentic than some of the other shops. It did seem marvelously Bahamian, and there were some really neat souvenirs that were made by locals. We bought an adorable hand painted seashell Christmas ornament.

As we were walking and carrying our grumpy daughter in the ergo, we saw another family come in with a little girl who appeared to be our daughter’s age. The little girl went up to a display of magnets that was balanced against a table, right in her toddler line of sight, and started touching them. Before her mom could stop her, one of them fell off and shattered. The woman who owned the booth was watching and immediately came up to demand payment for the broken magnet. I understood, but I sure was glad that our daughter wasn’t walking around. Everything is so colorful and fun-looking, and I’m sure it was quite tempting for little hands.

After we were done looking around, we wandered out into the streets to explore a bit. We didn’t have a plan or anything, but we stumbled upon the Anglican Cathedral.

We love churches, and we especially love seeing the art and architecture utilized in other countries, so we popped in.

It was gorgeous and so peaceful after the wild tourist areas we had just left. I ended up taking a ton of pictures in there. I hadn’t taken any while we were in the merchant area or the straw market because I didn’t want to have my phone out, so most of the pictures that we have from the port are from this church.

They had engraved stone markers on the wall for the people presumably buried there, but I found it so fascinating that most of the stones told the story of how the person died. I’d never seen anything like that before:

Across the street was a big bright building that said “Pirates of Nassau.” After I returned home and was googling the Nassau street names for this trip report, I realized that it was a pirates museum. The website says that it’s family friendly and even has a replica of a pirate ship inside! Cool.

I found it funny that the Anglican Cathedral was on the intersection of King and George:

How very British.

We wandered some more and saw that another ship had docked in the port. That made five:

We saw a gorgeous lighthouse. This really is a phenomenally beautiful part of the world:

And then we decided to head back to the ship.

While the midship ramp was open for disembarkation, the forward ramp was the only one open for embarkation, so we made the long haul down the length of the ship to make it down there. We wondered the entire way why this was the case, but we didn’t ask anyone. We were back on the ship by 10:45 AM and we wandered around a bit before the showing of The Nutcracker and the Four Realms at 11:30 AM. I had really wanted to see this on land because I adore the ballet, but we hadn’t gotten a chance to go. I was thrilled that they had showings of it.

In one of the gift shops, I saw that they had books for sale! I thought that was a neat touch for anyone who would want to read but hadn’t brought a book. The shops weren’t open because the ship was in port, but I zoomed in to give you an idea of what sort of authors they carried:

Before the movie, we got some food to take into the theater. The next day I heard someone saying that you couldn’t take food in (other than the concessions available right outside the theater), but we didn’t know that at the time and no one said anything. We got some chicken fingers for our daughter, and my husband and I each got a panini and fries from the little stand outside the pool area. I also made a coke float by putting some vanilla ice cream into a cup, pouring a fresh cup of coke from the fountain (because they explicitly say to use only new cups and I am a rule follower!), and pouring it into my ice cream cup. Yum!

Unfortunately, I wasn’t impressed with the movie, which is a huge bummer. I was expecting more dancing and a plot closer to the ballet, which wasn’t the case. I was super glad we hadn’t paid for a babysitter and movie tickets on land and was very grateful that I got to see it as part of the cruise. We left before it was over and headed back to the room to put our girl down for her nap.

We decided to get second lunch via room service, so I placed that order right when we got to the room, and then I proceeded to get our girl ready for her nap and put her to bed. Then, I pulled the blackout curtains around her crib area, and I sat on our bed reading a book with my book-light and waited for our food. The food arrived and then the two of us snuck past our sleeping daughter with the tray of food.

We got a caesar salad, a grilled cheese with tomato soup, a BLT, and some cookies and milk, but I didn’t take any pictures. We had another wonderful two hours chatting, eating, and watching the view. It wasn’t nearly as peaceful as the day before, though, because there were so.many.people coming and going from all of the ships. I was very glad to have a room on the aft of the ship, though, because we were the only side of the ship with a good view. The port and starboard side both were looking at the neighboring ships. But gosh, even with all the crowds, the Bahamas are so gorgeous!

After she woke up, we wanted to take her to the splash pad, so we all got into our swimsuits. We saw on the toddler activity guide that they were having a toddler play area on Deck 14, so we went to check it out. The sweet cast member who was up there was actually cleaning up; she said there had been some scheduling confusion and the room was needed for another event. But she was very kind and said she would pick up veeery slowly so our girl could play for a few minutes.

She ended up chatting with us for about 15 minutes while we asked her questions about working for DCL. She said she’s been with Disney for over 5 years and started in the parks, but after she met all of her goals there, she moved to the ships. She said she loved having so much contact with her superiors and that they do a really good job of making sure that the employees are happy. She also told us that they work all seven days in a row with NO DAYS OFF for the full four months, but then they get 1-2 months off between contracts, during which time she and some other crew members went to Europe. That part sounded neat to me. She said they do get chunks of days off (mornings, afternoon, etc) depending on the itinerary, though. Goodness, I can’t imagine how much time it would take to get used to that lifestyle! My husband also asked her how the crew member quarters are, and she said they were really nice. They only have one roommate, and they also get housekeeping once a week. I love hearing behind the scenes stuff like this, so I enjoyed our time together.

After we were done chatting we headed downstairs to Nemo’s Reef. I knew the splash pad was Nemo themed, so when we booked the cruise I introduced my daughter to Finding Dory in the hope that she would like it. She did! She was so excited to see the characters. I also expected her to love the water element because she so enjoyed the splash pad on Castaway Cay…but that wasn’t the case. She was pretty hesitant much of the time and wanted one of us in there near her at all times. She splashed around happily that way.

So we took turns in there while the other parent went up a deck higher and watched the neighboring ships back out of port. The weather was still gorgeous!

After this we went back to the room to shower and get ready for pirate night! We had brought some pirate jammies for our little one, so it was fun to put her in those.

Dinner was again in Animator’s Palate with the pirate night menu.

We tried to put the children’s menu hat on the baby and take a picture…but it didn’t go well.

She wasn’t a big fan of mommy wearing it either!

Here’s the menu:

And the adorable DCL logo but with pirate Mickey:

So clever! I love these little thorough touches.

The Sri Sumbhajee’s Vegetable Samosa (good):

Master Gibb’s ½ Pint of Shrimp Cocktail (very good):

Smoked Saucisson, Baked Brie, Brioche and Honey (not my favorite..in fact, Bertram recommended I get something else to accompany this because it is quite rich…much more like a dessert):

Carrot and Cilantro Soup (excellent):

We had decided to do the same thing as the night before and take our daughter to the nursery for the second half of dinner and for an hour or so after so that we could have a date night.

When I returned from taking her, something odd happened. Our tablemates still hadn’t appeared (they had been rather late the night before), so we asked Bertram if he knew where they were. He told us that they had requested their own table, so they had been moved. He said it was an odd thing to have happen, but he hoped that we would enjoy our own table for the rest of this night and the next night. I was sad about that as I had looked forward to continuing to bond with them over the trip, so that was disappointing. It also seemed like a pretty awkward thing for them to do halfway through a cruise. In the wake of all of this, our main courses came, but I was distracted and forgot to take pictures of any of it.

During dinner the head waiter John came by and told us that DCL is the only cruise line with permission to shoot off fireworks at sea. He said it took them a long time to get permission for it. After he left, my husband, who is a sailor, told me that it probably has a lot to do with the fact that they look like flairs which are an emergency distress signal.

Here is the dessert menu:

Rum Soaked Chocolate Cake (very good):

Pirate’s Treasure Sundae (very good):

Many of the options looked yummy and we were celebrating a special occasion that night, so we made the decision to ask to take two desserts to-go and enjoy them on the veranda after we put our girl to bed. Bertram was so accommodating and transferred the desserts onto the plates that have lids:

We ran them back to our room and changed into our swimsuits. The show that night was the debut of Mary Poppins Returns, which I wasn’t interested in seeing because I adore Julie Andrews and can’t imagine someone else even coming close to her level of genius. I think it’s epic that DCL debuts movies that are released during cruising though!

We decided instead to enjoy the adult only pools which were completely deserted because everyone else was at dinner or the show. Since we couldn’t ride the AquaDuck during the day when we have our girl, we started by riding it at the end of the family pirate night show. This was an excellent time to ride it because there was literally no line, so we walked right on it twice in a row. It was so fun!!! The water was absolutely freezing though, so we then ran over and jumped into the adult hot tub, which we had to ourselves. I love the plexiglass area in the bottom of the hot tub that looks into the ocean below. So cool!

We decided after this to have a couple of drinks, so we took our Castaway Cay cup over to the swim up bar to get it filled up. Again, we had the bar to ourselves, and there was a bartender named Sydney from India who was incredibly friendly and chatted with us for a bit. He told us all sorts of fascinating things about DCL in general, having worked with them for over a decade in varying capacities. He told us that the crew who live on Castaway Cay rotate periodically with crew on the ships, and that they have big bonfires on the days that there aren’t ships in port. He told us about the logistics of moving ships around the world and about the three new ships coming to the fleet. He also told us about Disney’s plans to have a new private island or beach when the new ships come. He also told us that he had worked on other cruise lines before coming to Disney, specifically on the exact P&O ship that had docked next to us in Nassau that day. He said that P&O ship did world cruises that lasted 30+ days and took cruisers around the globe. Wow!

It was almost time to go pick up our girl from the nursery, so we asked Sydney to make us another fun frozen cocktail for the road. I don’t remember what he called it, but it had fresh banana in it and was delicious. For what it’s worth, I definitely think we got our money’s worth with that cup since we both used it throughout the cruise. It would obviously be even more worth it on longer itineraries.

We went to go pick up our girl, and she came running to the door giggling and squealing and looking like she had a grand old time! As we left, we saw Tiana heading in. So cute!

We put her to bed and headed outside. Eating the desserts on the veranda overlooking the dark ocean and the stars was every bit as wonderful and dreamy as I had anticipated it would be. It was one of the most memorable date nights I think we have ever had. Here are the desserts we chose:

Caramel Macadamia Nut Cheesecake Tart (excellent):

Coconut Creme Flan (very good):

After awhile, it was time for the pirate party. Obviously someone needed to stay in the room with the baby, and since my husband really wanted to go to the party, we decided that he’d go by himself. Here are the pictures he brought back:

He had stationed himself in the back, partly because it was so crowded when he got there and partly because he wanted to beeline to the buffet in Cabanas as soon as the party ended. He said it was basically a Pirates of the Caribbean show where they had kiddos come up on stage and answer questions like “if you had a pirate ship, what would it be named? What color would it be?” And they sang “yo ho yo ho a pirate’s life for me” for each child who participated. Then, Jack Sparrow came out and did his stumbly pirate thing. Then they shot off the fireworks, which he said was really impressive. They shot them from both smokestacks, and the show spanned the width of the ship and lasted for about 15 minutes.

He said they then went right into Club Pirate with Pirates of the Caribbean themed music and a DJ and dancing. He went into the buffet, which he said was really impressive. One side of Cabanas was open, and he said that a tip for people is to walk past the first line to look at the other options. Most people stop at the first line (which this time was the baked potato bar), but the stations farther back in the restaurant didn’t have lines at all. He said they had a ton of variety of different food, like turkey legs and a taco bar and the crepe station. He got some crepes:

These are a chocolate fudge with coconut, a chocolate with banana, and a “toffee situation.” He said they had all kinds of stuff and they were really good!

He came back to the room to go to sleep after he finished his crepes.

These were waiting for us in the room when we got there earlier that evening:

And here is our towel animal for the night!

I loved this one!

Up Next: Day 4